By Sunny Igboanugo
Iyom,
I feel compelled to write this letter to you today for several reasons. I had thought it was a bad joke taken too far when I saw your name among the seven nominees named by President Bola Tinubu to his cabinet on Friday, October 25, 2024. My immediate reaction was that the move would have elicited a prompt and angry riposte from you. I had thought that you would have issued a statement instantly, rejecting the offer as an outright rubbish and warned the purveyors of that inglorious attempt to delete your name from their paper and from their lips permanently. In my Facebook account, I had described you as a deity, which would instantly reject a tainted sacrifice and rather than bless the assault and insult, visit its anger on the harbinger.
When none of such happened, I had hoped that you had decided to take the second option, which was to ignore the move as an irritation, not worthy of your attention. That was until I saw you in body and spirit at the Senate Chambers of the National Assembly fielding questions from the members, some of them salivating like Pavlov dogs, not being able to take their eyes off you, to the extent that Godswill Akpabio, the Senate President had to intervene and demand that they concentrated on the issue at hand.
You could then imagine my emotions at this development. Disappointment is a huge understatement to describe my feelings! I was completely gutted – speechless – eviscerated! How do I describe it? I have not really gotten over this feeling and I had hoped to wake up to the realisation that it was all a bad dream. I have since woken up, the morning after and discovered that it was not a nightmare after all, hence this letter.
I must confess that I know very little about you as a person, having not had any close encounter with you at all. But before I left Enugu to Lagos, I was a regular visitor to the Number 4 Isi-Uzor Street, Independent Layout, home of the late Ikemba Nnewi, Eze Igbo Gburugburu, in my 10-year-stint as the Correspondent of The Guardian, in Enugu. Needless to say that sitting down in the same company with Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, was one of my most cherished experiences as a journalist.
However, I discovered that during those many years, I never set my eyes on you except during ceremonies that required your presence. One of such occasions was at the celebration of the taking of that title from Adama Nri, at the said residence. Another occasion was during the state banquet in honour of then President Olusegun Obasanjo during an official visit to Enugu. I recall how the Dikedioramma Ndigbo, Amuma N’Egbe-Igwe, Odenigbo Ngwo, who was seated on the same table with the former President, sprang from his seat and rushed to the entrance of the hall to personally lead you to the seat beside him. Outside its fascination and drama that sent a reverberating sensation in the entire hall, neither the significance nor the optics was not lost on anyone. It underscored your place in the heart of the revered Igbo leader and by extension Ndigbo in general.
Though I have not had the privilege of meeting you in person, those who did, have always given you out as highly cerebral, articulate and resourceful. The rest I had always picked from your other public engagements in the media. I recall some of your epistles on the crisis in the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) leadership, which pitted you against some of the elements of the party in Anambra State. So, in the main, I know that you are not just a beautiful face. Aside being intellectually-mobile, you also have a name to yourself – both your family name and the one you decided to pick up through marriage. You were not only born with the proverbial silver spoon, you are also the owner of gold and silver yourself.
Your personal outlook, also suggests that your closet must be suffusing with nice apparels, while your treasure box must be filled with precious jewels of silver, gold, peals and diamonds. Therefore, it ought to be obvious that these are not your desires in making this move. It would be terrible otherwise. Now, who could have forgotten that hot slap you delivered to Ebelechukwu Obiano, wife of Willie Obiano, former Governor of Anambra State, as part of the fallouts of the APGA leadership issue? The echoes are yet resonating across the land. That singular incident clearly established demonstrable evidence that you are also a no-nonsense, fearless character, not beholding to any form of inanities of high office.
So, the question is why this? Interestingly, just a few days before this uncanny development, during your keynote address at the annual national conference and convention of the American Veterans of Igbo Descent (AVID) in Dallas, Texas in USA, you accused Igbo leaders of “conspiracy of silence” while using the case of “illegal” detention of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, to elaborate your position. You were specifically quoted as saying: “It is only when the leaders in Igboland rise up, jettison their perceived conspiracy of silence and confront the truth will there be the slightest possibility of healing and recovery from the unfortunate condition which Igboland currently finds itself in.
“The initial nonchalant attitude towards his (Kanu’s) illegal rendition and continued unlawful incarceration contributed greatly towards inflaming the tensions within the South-east region today. This nonchalant attitude also brought about the unforeseen consequences of opportunistic criminal elements not even remotely connected with the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) coming into the picture.” Now, what does your being named to Tinubu’s cabinet a few days after this outing and your subsequent acceptance of same suggest? Is it your own way of breaking this “conspiracy of silence?” Is it your own answer to dealing with the issue, which by your own account from that US outing shows you are quite seized of the subject in today’s Igboland?
I ask, Iyom, because I know something must have impelled you to travel this route. Are we expecting that MNK, would be free soon? Were you promised that freedom for the IPOB leader is tied to your playing a role in Tinubu’s government as a quid pro quo, and you had to bend backwards to accept, in order to save Igboland and the people you love so much from the current suffering? Was that the deal? If in the affirmative, be it known that this journey will have the blessings and prayers of Ndigbo. The spirit the land will bless the footstep. But if on the other hand and in the unlikely event that it is out of hunger for power, perks of office, glamour and the klieg-light, it will be most unfortunate – a most terrible mistake of tragic proportion.
I will not be the one to tell you that APC is a disaster that is happening already. It is not only the most underwhelming government in the history of Nigeria today; it is the most brutal, insensitive, soulless and clueless. The outcry in the street out there tells the full story. The number of people jumping into the lagoons in Lagos alone and those drinking Sniper to end it all rather than continuing the terrible life of odindu onwu ka mma, are almost competing with those being killed in the streets or in the bushes where their abductors kept them over inability to pay ransoms. The nightmare is indescribable.